We understand that running Facebook ads can seem daunting at times. Not to worry! I’m sharing 3 tips that help make Facebook ads easy, efficient and effective:

1. Create your core audiences from the start so they are available to use across all your ads. Doing it in one sitting will help you think through your strategy and plan your attack. Create audiences that support each of your business goals. 👉🏻 Top Tip: Use FB’s Suggestions when creating Interest-based audiences; it helps show you options similar to the ones you’re using

2. Make use of Facebook’s ads creation tools. Inside Ads Manager, there is a whole suite of tools that help you create video slideshows, add graphic overlays and even music. 👉🏻 Top Tip: Be on the lookout for Facebook’s special holiday-themed video templates and overlays.

3. Use the duplicate feature. After all the effort you put into building audiences and creative, don’t let it go to waste. You can duplicate campaigns, ad sets, and individual ads. Just change the sections you want and you’re good to go. 👉🏻 Top Tip: Duplicating copies everything under the level you duplicated. For example, if you duplicate the campaign, the ad set(s) and ads will be duplicated. If it’s the ad set, the ads will be copied.

At Crystal Media, we directly manage ads for retailers. So I thought it important to share stories from two retailers who recently saw successful results using Facebook Ads; by my assessment, one of the most powerful marketing tools for independent stores today. I hope they excite you to take action. Enjoy!

Mary Todd’s Hallmark: Video View ads

After achieving great success with Mary Todd’s Hallmark’s 12 Days of Christmas campaign, we continued to promote their video using Most Recent Video Views.

Cost dropped from $0.02 per View to $0.004 per View (!!)

14,492 Views in the first 3 weeks of March vs. 4,019 in February (⬆️ 260%)

20,606 Engagements in the first 3 weeks of March vs. 15,650 in February (⬆️ 26%)

Korna Pet: Traffic ads

Korna Pet’s goal was to drive more traffic to their website, so we ran Traffic ads on FB and IG.

804 Landing Page Views in February

$0.19 per Landing Page View vs. $0.45 average

Traffic to their website driven by Facebook and Instagram increased 109% in February from 456 visits to 954 visits.

Aren’t those awesome results?!

If you’re ready for us to take the wheel on your ads (and possibly be our next success story), click here to learn moreand schedule a Discovery Call with Pauline to see if our Ads Management is right for you and your store.

Do you have a lot of excess inventory that you need to get rid of? Are you close to reaching your sales goal for the month but need something to get more customers through the door? Well, I have just the thing you need to help drive traffic through your doors and to help meet your sales goals, it’s called the 5th Saturday Sale.As the name suggests, this promotion/event happens in months that have five Saturdays. Those months being June, September, and December for the rest of 2018.

Watch the full episode:

This is easily a favorite with our retailers because many have seen some major wins when hosting a 5th Saturday Sale. For example, one of our students had a line of 70 people waiting at their door BEFORE the event even started (keep reading to find out how they did this!). Then, this same retailer had a line of 200 people in line to checkout DURING that same event.

The most common type of 5th Saturday Sale Promotion that we see is to give shoppers a reusable bag and anything they can fit in the bag they can buy at a discount usually 20% off or higher. There is no right or wrong way to run this promotion, it’s completely customizable to whatever is going to work best for your type of business.

Here are some more promo ideas you can choose from:

Buy 4 items, get the 5th one for $1 or free

BOGO 50-70% off

Entire store 20-40% off

Once you get the event details down, the next thing you need to be doing is marketing and promoting the event on social! This should be down a couple weeks ahead of time, so you can get the word out to your audience.

We recommend setting up a Facebook Event Page to help promote the event. This should be where any updates and announcements are made. Someone who marked themselves as “Interested” in your event still gets these event updates posted to the event page, so it could help push people who are on the fence about attending into coming, driving more traffic through your doors too.

If you have an advertising budget, setting up an Event Ad in Ads Manager is another great way to build exposure for this 5th Saturday Sale. It doesn’t have to be a big budget either! One of our retailers had an ad spend of $24 for an event ad she ran and profits for the event were up 42%…can you imagine that?!

Lastly, you should also do a dedicated email send to your email list (if you have one) inviting them to your event and link it to the Facebook Event Page. That way you’re keeping your current customers in the loop even if they aren’t following you on social media.

Circle these dates on your calendar and challenge yourself to set up a 5th Saturday Sale in your store! Share with us your results and let us know how it went for your business in a comment below.

You can catch new episodes of The Modern Marketing Show every Monday at 10 a.m PST on our Facebook Page. Replays will be available on the blog each week.

Thanks for being here! This is your replay page where you can view our latest webinar, “3 Steps to Help You Get Set Up for Social Media Success” — we covered how to make simple yet incredibly effective efforts at staying on top of your social media game for your business. This page is also where you can learn more about how to join our social media training program (just for retailers), Social Edge.

Make sure to watch the replay below — and remember, we only have this page available for 48 hours. It will be available until Thursday, May 12th at 5pm, PST. As always, our Social Edge members have endless access to webinar replays.

As I’ve stated in many of my webinars and courses, social media is as great as you make it. And only if you carve out time. Don’t have time for your social media? Hire someone! Commit to yourself and to your store. – Here’s a quote I’m inspired by:

“Success is an attitude, a mindset, a decision, a commitment, a promise. A belief that it can be done, should be done and WILL be done.” -George Akomas Jr.

Welcome, I’m excited you’re here. This page will give you not only the replay of the holiday webinar, ‘Tis the Season to be Successful, but will also be the place to access more information on the Holiday Marketing Bundle. I’m happy you’re committed to your social media success and grateful to be a part of your online marketing journey.

You Spoke, We Listened.

As I mentioned in the webinar, we’ve launched a game changing product we believe you’re going to love. In fact, retailers have already told us this is exactly what they’re looking for.

Many retailers I’ve worked with have asked for me to do their social media marketing for them – this is quite possibly the most cost efficient solution to this request, which is the Holiday Marketing Bundle. It’s packed with social media posts, content and graphics, ALL DONE FOR YOU! ….Just waiting to be used to market your store online. This is so exciting!

Are you a Social Edge member? If so, you get the bundle included in your membership (woot woot)!

During the webinar we had some really fantastic questions. One that stuck out is how to hire a social media position at your store. We have some really thorough, helpful questions that will guide you through the process of hiring help with your social media efforts. Click here to get my full insights on this important task: Questions to Ask Interviewees For a Social Media Position